Oil and Water
by Tigrin
Summary: Craig's looking forward to cutting ties with his old life and starting over in college. But first, he has to break up with Tweek. If only it were that easy.


He wakes up to Tweek shaking in his sleep. The irritating rattle of bed springs worms into Craig's ears as his eyes blink open in the dark, the blurry flutter of curtains inches from his nose. The warm glow of a street light blinks in and out through a crack in the curtains. A fan drones away somewhere behind him, and every time it oscillates past the bed, the crooked blades catch the cage of the fan with a scraping shriek. In the thick heat under the blankets, Tweek's curled hands pressed to the bare skin of his back are jittering ice cubes. Craig tries to roll around to face Tweek, but it's more like wiggling around in a tangle of twin-size sheets and elbows and knees. Now the fluttering curtains are the flutter of Tweek's eyes darting around beneath his eyelids. There's a little crease between his eyebrows, and his cheeks are twitching. His body rocks and his legs kick every so often, punctuation marks in a steady rhythm of shaking.

Craig pulls the blankets away, exposing Tweek's shoulder and the top of his chest to the air. There's a dull sheen of sweat on Tweek's skin in the dim light. The breeze from the fan crawls by, prickling his skin and brushing through the wild locks of his blonde hair. Tweek's nose bunches up and he pulls his clenched hands to his chin. Craig reaches out towards the passing breeze, twines his fingers into Tweek's hair, stroking the back of his neck. Tweek's hands uncurl, and the crease between his brows smoothes out. He lets out a long sigh as he drifts back into a heavy (and mercifully, motionless) sleep.

Craig pulls his hand away, brushing the sweat-soaked bangs from Tweek's forehead. There's a faint whistling sound every time air pushes out of Tweek's nostrils. Craig pinches Tweek's nose closed, and savors the momentary silence as Tweek's face scrunches up. He lets go and air bursts out of Tweek's lungs, cracking his mouth open. Warm, humid air puffs onto Craig's face, assailing him with the stench of stale coffee and buttered popcorn. Drool leaks out the corner of Tweek's mouth, pooling out onto the pillow that the two of them are failing in their attempt to share. Craig's lips purse into a thin line, and he shrugs the blankets off and sits up.

The room is just the way he remembers it from before he closed his eyes. Boxes are stacked in the corner near the closet and scattered around the room, half packed, their contents strewn around the floor or hanging over the flaps. They've been crudely labeled on the sides with a large black pen in Tweek's shaky handwriting - "Clothes", "Books", and the entirely unhelpful "Stuff". A separate pile of boxes by the door are already packed and sealed with an excessive wrapping of brown tape - "Tweek's Toys", "Tweek's Model Kits (FRAGILE)". Probably destined for storage in the Tweaks' attic. No space for any of that shit in a college dorm room, after all.

Craig hasn't even started packing yet. What does he really need to bring with him, anyway? Socks and underwear are important, maybe. He still doesn't know how to do laundry yet. Maybe he'll just keep buying new underwear rather than washing it. That's a perfectly reasonable, adult thing to do, right?

What is the adult thing to do? Probably not fucking your boyfriend when you originally came over to break up with him.

They have to break up sooner or later. They can't keep carrying on this thing into college. College is a chance to start over, right? Join a club, go to parties, fuck chicks. After all, they were finally getting out of this shitty small town. Well, maybe not too far. Just to Boulder. But still. It was somewhere away from the same stupid faces they'd spent their whole lives around. Craig had hoped things might change when they had to go to the next town over just to go to high school (it was like no one in South Park had ever anticipated the kids would grow up and need a higher education), but nope - the same class, the same stupid fucking kids all over again. There were no second chances for Craig Tucker, just the same reputation he'd had since he was in kindergarten with these fucks. Tethered to the same person he'd been shoved with since they were ten years old.

After all, no one had ever asked him if he wanted to be together with Tweek. It was just the whole town being batshit insane, as usual. People in town just wanted to pat themselves on the back for being so progressive, so accepting of the two "gay" kids who didn't actually want anything to do with each other. Fighting it didn't do much good, so Craig just swallowed his confusion and anger and went along with it. After all, it was like the people in South Park changed their minds every half hour. They were bound to get bored of it eventually and forget, and Tweek and Craig could go back to their separate lives.

It...

... was never meant to go on this long.

From the very start, they never exactly worked. The two of them mixed together like oil and water. Tweek was always so anxious, so obsessed over what everyone else thought, the secret things they might be feeling. Craig could never bring himself to care about what anyone else thought. He didn't want to be a part of Tweek's paranoia, his fears and frustrations. He just wanted to drift through life and do what he wanted and be left the hell alone. Everything was always so serious to Tweek. Nothing was to Craig. Not even their relationship together. And that's where it always went wrong.

Maybe that's why they fought all the time. Not the sort of fighting that Craig saw in other couples in high school: the bitching and snapping, the ignored phone calls, the passive-aggressive social media posts. With Tweek and Craig, it was like the irritations and the things unsaid between them would fester and boil until they exploded outwards with white hot rage. It was raw, guttural anger bursting out in a torrent of shouting and swears. Sometimes Craig threw the first punch, but it always ended up with the two of them on the ground, swinging and kicking at whatever part of the other was in reach. So many times a hand would clench down on his shoulder, and Clyde or Token would be ripping him away from Tweek, and for a while he wouldn't be able to see anything but red, until he and Tweek were sitting in the principal's office again. Craig couldn't hear the low, rumbling burble of the principal's voice; he was fixated on trying to keep his head tilted back to stop the blood pouring from his nose, dribbling down his chin and soaking the front of his jacket. He'd glance over at Tweek sometimes, and Tweek would be gazing down at the floor, biting a crack in his lip, with one eye swollen and turning purple and the other red with angry tears. In those moments, as the principal shoved money in their hands and pushed them out the door into the empty hallway, Craig always felt the anger drain away with the blood splotching the ugly carpeting at their feet. Tweek would sigh, take Craig's hand, and drag him to the bathroom. Craig would lean against the sink in silence, holding a crumpled paper towel to his nose, as Tweek blotted the stains out of their clothes and muttered under his breath. Gazing down at the blood oozing out of Tweek's split lip, Craig felt an entirely different kind of heat. Craig loved the little squeak of surprise that Tweek would make when their lips met. It was adorable, like the squeak of a guinea pig. Tweek always fought it at first, swiping at him and threatening to leave, but the tension hung between them like a stretched rubber band. All it took was a look, a touch, and they'd snap. Breathing hard into each other's mouths, the iron taste of blood stinging their tongues. Tweek's hips trembling under Craig's hands, Tweek's fingers clawing at Craig's back. And then the bell would ring, and Tweek would jolt away like a frightened cat, and Craig would be left waiting out the rest of the day in class in frustrated agony.

How many times had this scene looped over and over again? How many times had Craig come close to finally ending it, only to see that twitch of fear and pain and anger in Tweek's face, and lose his nerve? No matter how much they fought or what about, Craig never apologized. He knew all it would take was a touch, and Tweek would forgive him like always.

Because in the end what it came down to was that everything that made them so angry about each other was everything that made them work together. It was only at night in the depths of sleep that Tweek still twitched and seized the way he once did as a child. All it took was a small touch from Craig and he'd mellow out. He just had that sort of calming effect. No matter what strange thing that Tweek worried about, Craig would always sit back and listen. He knew just how to ease Tweek without dismissing him. He started to care about things just because it was something Tweek cared about. He started to take things seriously because Tweek took it seriously. When Tweek poured endless late nights into studying and cramming to get into Boulder and pursue his dream of being an architectural engineer, Craig stayed up with him. Craig applied to the same school in the astronomy track, because he really had no other plans after high school other than getting the fuck out of dodge, and Tweek gave him a hard time about it. Didn't he have dreams? Wasn't there something he wanted to do with his life? He'd never cared much about school - spent almost more time in detention or making out with Tweek than actually in class - but he'd somehow got carried along anyway, and when he got his acceptance letter in the mail, he could only feel a sort of numb shock.

On second thought, if he'd really wanted to break up with Tweek, maybe he shouldn't have applied to the same school.

In that moment with the letter scrunched in his hand, he'd decided that he had to end it somehow. They couldn't embark on this new life still chasing their tails together. Tweek didn't need Craig dragging him down if he wanted to achieve his dreams. He was dead beat, dead weight.

He was afraid. He'd only made it this far with Tweek. How far would he make it on his own without him? He'd crash and burn and drop out before he ever managed to gain the freshman fifteen. Tweek was the only one in his life who made him feel like he mattered, like he could go somewhere or do something, like he wasn't a total fuck up. When Tweek opened the door tonight, the crisp air conditioning spilling out into the summer air, all Craig could see was his future spilling out with it. Burning out into a supernova and collapsing into the black hole of his life.

So he'd wimped out. He'd made some excuse that he missed Tweek. No, everything was fine. No, nothing was wrong. Tweek had stared at him, his brow quirking, but didn't argue. They'd sprawled out on the couch, bingeing a sci-fi TV series that Craig had been trying to get Tweek into, until neither of them were really watching it anymore, and moved things up to the bedroom. Craig was silently grateful that the Tweaks were still on vacation, because they could be as rough or loud as they wanted and not bother anyone. Tweek was notoriously free with his voice to the point it was a bit embarrassing. He more than made up for how quiet Craig was. Afterwards they'd just collapsed, and Craig forgot all about why he'd come here in the first place.

The rattling bed springs breaks into Craig's thoughts, and he looks down. The sweat's dried off of Tweek, and he's shivering in the open air, his teeth clenched and rattling. Craig lays down next to him again, tugging the blankets over their shoulders. He slips his fingers through Tweek's, until the warmth between them calms Tweek again, and he stops shivering.

The drone of the oscillating fan, the rhythmic shriek of the fan blades, the subtle push of air in and out of Tweek's nose, lulls Craig back to sleep. He doesn't even mind the cold sting of Tweek's drool on the pillow under his cheek.

Well, there's always tomorrow.


End file.
